Mr. Hardy Jackson, who to me was such an inspirational story during the early days of Katrina, is dying.
My heart weeps for him and hope that Hardy and his wife are reunited at long last when the end comes.
I have never forgotten Mr. Hardy Jackson and the horror he went through.
Nor will I ever.

ATLANTA (CBS ATLANTA) - One man's heartache during Hurricane Katrina and his determination to keep a promise to his late wife captured the nation's attention.
Hardy Jackson lost his wife to the storm surge. He recalled what happened to CBS Atlanta News' Jennifer Mayerle hours after the floodwaters receded. The two have kept in touch since then.

"Seven long years. No, I thought I'd never see seven years pass by. It's been a long, long hard seven years, too," Jackson said.

Hardy Jackson lives in Palmetto, GA, along with two of his kids and four grandkids. They are hundreds of miles from Biloxi, MS, the place they used to call home before Hurricane Katrina roared ashore and changed their lives.

-snip-

Now facing his own mortality, Hardy Jackson received a letter he'd been longing for, his wife's death certificate. Tonette's body was lost to the storm surge. The court order reads, "The date of death is hereby established as August 29, 2005, the date of Hurricane Katrina."
"It gave me a whole lot of closure. Dried my tears up, eased the pain in my heart," Hardy Jackson said.

The audacity today of someone on Democratic Underground to say in print, that a persons vote is meaningless.That one person doesn't matter.

I am sure glad someone didn't tell that to the following 10 people, and that they didn't listen
President Abraham Lincoln
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
President Lyndon B. Johnson
President Barack Obama
President Jimmy Carter
President John F. Kennedy
President Woodrow Wilson
President Bill Clinton
President Hillary45 Clinton
President Michelle46 Obama
The 10 greatest Presidents of All Time(the first five in numerical order).

The other biggest laugh on Ralph Nader and the others is that President Obama is a two term President, and Hillary45 will be the next two term President.And Michelle46 could be after that.

Remember-the revolution was won in 2008.
Life is greater in America collectively in spirit, than it has been in 50 years.(and it wasn't as great then as fabled anyhow. Nostalgia of the Happy Days era really wasn't, especially for most of the people
who were left out of Thomas Jefferson's "all men are created equal" spiel.

The world is better for it. (this is said collectively).

The legacy of Ralph Nader is, that he singlehandedly and trippingly ironically so, killed off the third party movement for ever more in America.
Never again is the phrase.

Karma came back to avenge 2000, in a trippingly, groovy sort of way, don'tcha think?
Never again will the Ralph Nader's be anything more than an afterthought in National elections.
Because Ralph Nader was too lazy to do any actual grunt work,(like run for the senate like say Al Franken or Harry Reid),(easy to whine about Harry Reid, but run for office and be better? Naaa, that is work), but instead lazed around with the whine making speeches like
Ron Paul,who now gets $50,000 a speech if there is anyone stupid enough to hire him to speak.Ralph Nader according to reports is a multi-millionaire himself (the upper 1%).
If you google one place says minimum wealth of $4.2 million.Wish I had one eighth of that.

and if you look at the Presidential place mat that one can purchase at the Lincoln Memorial, or the FDR memorial gift shop, one thing is for sure. There are 44 Presidents pictured, 43 different people(one was President twice and is accorded two different numbers).
Nowhere is the name of Ralph Nader even mentioned.

Sad thing is, I probably give him more lip time than he gets anywhere else. But like most,
in the sands of times, most people after a generation or two of family members, are not remembered.Most people would probably just like to never hear his name again, but to have the slogan NEVER AGAIN, people must not forget. Because otherwise history has a habit of
repeating itself. The other ironic thing is, most people alive today in America, for all intents and purposes were not alive when Ralph did something good. After all, it's been what, 50 years now come 2016? How many of us can remember that far back? It's a shame.

But the men and women that are(or will be) President and Vice President shall never be forgotten. Not even Millard Fillmore.

and the people who protested in the 1960s, including special mention to Mark Rudd, well, I admired him then, I respect him now. Working from within. Not tearing things down with no plan what happens the day after.

2013 is not the 1960s.

and every persons vote is meaningful.
Shame on the person today who said that one should waste a vote, that a vote of one person is not important. Shame on that person.
My grandparents who took the treacherous journey with my mother and other relatives, giving up everything (but never whining),through the mountains, through countries, some not friendly, to come to America, for the right to vote-and the 20 million people that were unable to make that journey. shame on this poster today who said a vote is unimportant.
Shame on Ralph Nader for aiding and abetting and helping to take away what the majority of Americans wanted and voted for in 2000.And what it gave us the next 8 years.

[img][/img]
Peace.

especially some of those juvenile answers above. Are we in junior high school?
(oops, that is an archaic phrase. Today people call it middle school, but back then we
called it junior high school, where people thought things like wetting toilet paper and throwing it on the ceiling were funny when it dried and fell on someones head.
Or smoking in the boys room(so fondly recalled in an archaic 1973 song).
Now 90% of the public is smart enough not to smoke in the first place.

Grow up, actions have consequences. 2000 led to every bad thing afterward.

But 2008 started forever more, the betterment to overcome what 2000 had happen.

Because yeah, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, yeah, AL Gore would have named those people to the court. If you believe Ralph Nader, he would have.
But in real life, he would not have.
Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagen, Sotermayer are not Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, Rehnquist, O'Connor, Kennedy.

shame shame shame on anyone who says they are.

IMHO.

feel free to disagree with me, and support Ralph Nader and Ron Paul and Ross Perot.
Though it's beyond me what those people have to do with Democratic Underground as none of those people support the democratic party causes.

in another thread, it is talking about Krugman, the writer, should be treasury secretary.
Nine out of nine times, people who are writers/talking heads/speech makes do not actually want to serve the public, it would take away their livelihood, much like those that were in a position in public service, lost an election and took their ball and mitt and left the arena, only to whine and whine and whine (aka Bill Bradley, aka Russ Feingold, etc.) instead of just serving the public in some elected office, that doesn't have to be the top, or by relearning things while in office.
But not just by whining.

For a good example of someone who just wants to serve the public, and does so not for fame and fortune, just to serve, no matter what position, see Jerry Brown. After the presidential run, (and the public sold him down the river), after his first go at Gov., he just set an example for all to follow- he went back to smaller positions in the public sector and served, a shining beacon of a human being.

and note that Jerry Brown has, through his ideas, now brought a surplus to California, a complete turnaround, and he, the inventor of the 1-800 send in a dollar campaign for president that almost (if not for a slur against him near the end) won him the nomination years ago. And the constant rightwing name calling against him. And he proved that when the right candidate is running, whom the public knows, respects, and loves through decades of service,
money could not buy that election and enabled California to sensibly balance the budget, have a surplus at the same time increasing spending as needed.(in a way making taxes a good word for once, instead of the hijacked bad word the republicans made it).

also the legendary (and my board name tribute to) Sen./Gov. Bob Graham's 386 workdays he did as Gov/Senator of Florida, to try and better the citizens of Florida, he wanted to know what different people actually did

wiki-

Bob Graham's campaign trademark was to work a full, eight-hour day at various jobs which represented Florida's constituents. He began his "Workdays" in 1974, teaching a semester of civics at Miami Carol City Senior High School in Miami while serving in the Florida Senate. At that time, Bob Graham was on the Education Committee. After a speech, M. Sue Riley, an English teacher at Carol City, approached Bob Graham and said, "The only problem with members of the Education Committee is nobody has any experience in education."

Bob Graham was taken aback at that assertion and asked, "Well, what can I do about that?" A few months later, Ms. Riley contacted Senator Graham with a proposal to teach the next semester of civics. Following that teaching experience, he performed 99 additional workdays prior to his successful 1986 campaign for U.S. Senate.

Graham has continued doing workdays throughout his tenure as governor and in the United States Senate. His jobs have included service as a police officer, busboy, railroad engineer, construction worker, fisherman, garbageman, factory worker, and teacher. On No. 365, he checked in customers, handled baggage and helped serve passengers on US Airways. He totaled 386 days.

Two examples of people just doing.
Not bloviating, not in it for fame and fortune.
Just doing.

(and just wistful here, if only Gore had picked Bob Graham in 2000, or Kerry had picked Bob Graham instead of the fraud known as Edwards in 2004, how different life in America would have been...
and in the 1980s, if only Jerry Brown had become President.
(cue in Louis Armstrong, "What a wonderful world&quot it would have been.

But Jerry was called names and Bob Graham was called too ugly, too old, too obsessive
(in an age that led to Cheney being the least open VP, wouldn't Bob's notebooks of daily data been a breathe of fresh air?) and Bob Graham was never picked by any of the people for VP.
It is a damn shame.

When the 3rd party ites say both parties are one and the same
besides their continual lies on that front, on the issue of SCOTUS alone, remember
people like Bob Graham, Jerry Brown and Barack Obama are out there making a difference and laying to rest the lies.

If only everyone in elected office would be like those three.
What a wonderful world this would indeed be.

a republican that would actually be able to win these states without playing games, would in essence lose the states because it would help the democrats

(much like every other "fix" the repubs have tried like term limits of presidents. It backfires on them.

One of the reasons the democrats did not rush to change things after the 2000 and 2004 elections when 2008 came.

And one of the reasons they are hesitant to change anything at all. Because it backfires at some point.

And the public is wiser now and with new social media, they are quick to pick things up and make an issue of it.
(Had for instance there been the social media in 2000, I am convinced the Tom DeLay goons who posed as regular citizens would have been outed and the recount continued
and
The meeting that led to the real info in the "supposed" fake memo would have had pictures from cell phones and if there was a set up(like it was said at the time that a republican trickster was posing as the person passing a memo on), he would instantly have been outed and they couldn't have screwed Rather.

I don't much like the theft scenerios anyhow. After 2012, President Obama won a major landslide, yet some were still floating the Rove story to delegitimize his major victory.

And even lets say they change some of the states-
well, the GREAT candidates would adjust their thinking and go to all the areas in a state and not just the big ones, so one could not even say, that had President Obama shook hands with thousands of people in every district that was red, or tossed those districts some pork, why wouldn't some of them vote with him instead of against him?

And again, with the demographic change, soon red areas will be blue anyhow, so as you said, the individual repubs will end up being the ones voted out of office.
And it will lead to a better house, and more governorships(assuming we stock each race and have backups for the future in all districts. Why is that so hard for democratic state leaders to do? (if a state has 250 positions, you mean to tell me there are not 500 people in each state fully qualified to run? And in this day of social media, why can't a separate message for funds be put out for each and every one of them?
It could be like an adopt a red state district pledge across the country.
Make fundraising nationally to use on a very local area.